Minneapolis & DC

Plus: Taylor Swift's Engagement

When we initially decided on the topic for today’s episode, Alise popped it into our database as “Crime. Boy, I Don’t Know.”

Classic West Wing scene. Whether it ages well or not probably depends entirely on your mood.

My mood is all over the place these days. You’ll hear that in this episode. When we talk about the shooting at Annunciation Church in Minneapolis, I’m at an absolute loss for words. I came close to having a full fall-apart, right on the microphone.

I feel for the people in Minneapolis—people who love their place and are just trying to live their lives, who have been hit by this horror. I also feel for the people of the District of Columbia—people who love their place and are just trying to live their lives, who take the brunt of this administration’s worst policies over and over and over again.

Whatever your mood is, I hope listening makes you feel less alone. I also hope you leave thinking about the world of policy and tactics that exists between “Crime. Boy, I don’t know” and the deployment of armed National Guard troops, masked ICE agents, and all manner of federal law enforcement in American cities.

Topics Discussed

• Minneapolis Catholic School Shooting

• President Trump Declares a Crime Emergency in DC

• Crime Statistics vs. Public Perception of Safety

• Outside of Politics: Taylor Swift & Travis Kelce Engagement

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Episode Resources

• Save money on your annual Pantsuit Politics Premium Subscription with our summer sale

• Sandy Hook Promise

Crime and the DC Deployment

• Situational Update Federal Surge (Government of the District of Columbia)

• CBS News analyzed D.C. crime data amid National Guard deployments. Here's what the numbers show. (CBS News)

• As Trump considers deploying National Guard in Chicago, here's a look at some previous deployments (AP News)

• Trump exaggerates, misstates facts on DC crime amid police takeover (AP News)

• The Accountability Gap: Unsolved Violent Crime in the United States (CSG Justice Center)

Taylor Swift & Travis Kelce’s Engagement

• Taylor Swift Engagement Announcement (Instagram)

• Taylor Swift Is Engaged (Every Single Album)

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our Managing Director and Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement.

Our theme music was composed by Xander Singh with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima.

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To search past episodes of the main show or our premium content, check out our content archive.

This podcast and every episode of it are wholly owned by Pantsuit Politics LLC and are protected by US and international copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws. We hope you'll listen to it, love it, and share it with other people, but not with large language models or machines and not for commercial purposes. Thanks for keeping it nuanced with us.

Episode Transcript

Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

Beth [00:00:09] And this is Beth Silvers.

Sarah [00:00:10] You're listening to Pantsuit Politics. Earlier this month, President Trump announced a federal takeover of Washington, DC due to a crime emergency. The crime statistics tell a different story as cities across the country experienced historic drop in crime rates. But a healthy majority of Americans still feel there is too much crime and broadly support how President Trump is attempting to fix it. So we wanted to talk about all of that today before we turn, as we always do to what's on our mind Outside of Politics, which is the engagement of one Taylor Allison Swift to Travis Michael Kelce.

Beth [00:00:46] Before we get started, it is a last call here for our summer Substack sale. Our Substack community did not have to wait for our thoughts on TNT and have been breathlessly discussing it with us in the comments for days. So if you would like to subscribe for that type of immediate access, take advantage of this sale. Go to Pantsuit Politics on Substack. You've got just days left to save 15% on your annual subscription. We'll have all the links for you to do that in the show notes.

Sarah [00:01:11] Up next, let's talk about crime. Beth, when you talk about crime, you inevitably have to talk about risk. You have to about the perception of risk. You have talk about how fear can run roughshod over all of that. And nowhere is that more evident than with school shootings. Before we talk about D.C., we wanted to acknowledge that there was a heartbreaking school shooting at a Minneapolis Catholic school yesterday that has left two children dead as well as the shooter and 20 people injured. This one hit really close to home for me, Beth, because it was during prayer, the same as my school shooting back in 1997 that took place during the morning prayer circle at my high school. And it was just heartbreaking to hear that contrast. This moment that's supposed to be about calm and quiet and peace and connection being shattered by violence.

Beth [00:02:30] We both have 10 year olds. We have lots of listeners in Minneapolis. Minneapolis has been through a lot. Just think about the last five years, what Minneapolis has endured. Here are two places that you want children to feel safe: church and school. I don't want to just fall apart as we're recording, but I feel that. And I guess I want to let people who are feeling that know that you are not alone, that I think everyone is feeling that right now. Everyone is feeling that right now. It's awful.

Sarah [00:03:10] Well, and like I said, it's such a manifestation of what happens when we talk about crime. Look, there are 55 million K through 12 students in the United States. This is a very low probability event. When I was reading a researcher describe it as a low probability, but high consequence event because it's so scary, it so terrifying. It's so many people's worst nightmare. And, look, I think particularly with this event, there's a lot of things at play here. I can't help but notice, and I wonder if you have too, that more school shootings seem to be happening at private schools. And I have to think that this is because public schools have been so hardened. We have enormous security measures. Just in the time from when Griffin entered kindergarten, when any parent could just walk their kid every morning into the kindergarten classroom, to now where you cannot enter the elementary school very easily.

[00:04:11] I think about the shooting in Nashville and at another private school, and how there seems to be a shift. And in some ways, that's weirdly not encouraging, but the hardening seems to working. We have way more school shootings, obviously, than like 20 years ago. But we noticed this in our 10-year flashback, that it felt like every episode. And that when we started recording Pantsuit Politics was another shooting, another school shooting, another school shooting, and it doesn't feel like that as much as it used to. And also one is too many and one is heart breaking and one is shattering and one in place on all these fears we have about our kids being in unsafe places.

Beth [00:04:58] Yeah, this is a problem that you want to work every side of. So while I'm really sad that we've had to do the hardening of the schools, I've been supportive of it and I've wanted to make sure there's funding for it because you want to work every side of the problem. And it seems to me now where you have worked that hardening side, you also have to work the softening side for lack of a better term. Like how do we have fewer people who want to do this, who are in this place of a real break with themselves and other people to want to do this? And we've talked before with someone from Sandy Hook Promise and how they work on crisis lines. If you see something, let us know, let us help. And that's been really successful. I think there's a part of my brain that when this happens goes immediately to again and again and we do nothing. And I do want to make sure that I acknowledge that we've done a lot of things and a lot those things have really helped and that does nothing for the people who are dead and traumatized today. And so how do we just keep making progress here?

Sarah [00:06:08] Yeah, I really do want to push back against the idea that we've done nothing, because I think it's so toxic. And I don't think it's true. And there's always more we can do. I do want to talk about the shooter, because we have learned in the last 24 hours that the shooter identified as female but had changed their name and was born biologically male. Much like the shooter at the Nashville Private School. I can hear the chorus of 10,000 voices already. The chorus of-- rightfully, we don't want to target the trans community. We don't want to reduce down this very complicated problem. We don't want to. We don't want to. We don't want to. But when we don't speak with nuance or care about something like this, then we leave the discussion, we leave the floor open to people who we know will not speak about this, who will exploit this. And I don't want to do the something we've talked about a lot that we feel like we did with Epstein, that we did in all these other areas. Like that's just something crazy people talk about. That's just something nazis point out.

Beth [00:07:36] Exploitative.

Sarah [00:07:38] Exploitative. We don't want to do that. And I think it matters that this is the second shooter that was trans. I think it matters not because I think trans people are inherently violent but because I think we have to unpack that and we can't just shove it away. It doesn't do anything positive for anyone involved here, including the trans community, to not reckon with this reality.

Beth [00:08:10] For my part, when I look at the dimensions of school shooting. What I keep coming back to is this idea of the shooters feeling a real break with themselves and other people. And I try to think about how to describe that without getting into tropes or easy answers or answers that are so complicated that you can't do anything about them. So I just try to about it as like this is a person who for a huge variety of reasons could have had some kind of break with themselves and other people. For me, I have thought a lot about how to deal with the widespread use of policy to tell transgender people in this country that they don't belong. I've thought a lot about this. It is important to me to talk about it and to acknowledge it for what it is.

[00:09:16] It is simultaneously important to not talk about it as though it is permanent or fully representative of society because I see in my communities, in my faith community, a real embrace of transgender people as people, as our beloved people who are here to be with us, deserving of all the dignity and rights and respect and celebration as anyone else. And it is important to me to make sure to express myself in that way and to say, this isn't the last day. Do not be despairing. Know that you are loved and cared about. Because I worry about how smooth the path is from America hates you to the kind of break that causes people. You just see that over and over, right? School shooters feel like they don't belong. And so I think the best personal contribution I can make is to always counter any message about threats and policy and truly bad laws with a but you belong message. And I believe that more people feel that than don't.

Sarah [00:10:40] Yeah, I had such concerns about the language that surrounded so many of these really terrible laws. They were terrible laws. They were targeted. They were terrible. But when you look at a community and say, "They're trying to kill you; they don't care if you die," that is dangerous. Human beings don't deal well with that type of threatening language. And I would have conversations with my own son about this in the moment. He's like, well, what are you supposed to say? And I would say that you are strong and this community also has a history of rising above and persisting and succeeding. And that is as important as illuminating or speaking to the history of oppression. It cannot just be, especially young people; you cannot just look at young people and say, they don't care if you die. I just think that is kindling. I had such concerns about that, the way we would speak at the time. Look, this is not my first rodeo. I've spent a lot of time thinking about school shooters over the course of my life.

[00:12:18] And I think this is relevant to the knots we twist ourselves in for crime in general, which is there is a psychological default. I do not think it is a character flaw. I think it's just a psychological default that so many people find themselves in. It's the in-group, it's the out-group. This is my group, I'm going to protect them. You're a threat to my group, you are less than human because you are evil, because you are violent, because you are dangerous, because you are X,Y,Z. A teenage boy, A young black man, a trans person, whatever the case may be, it's just we decide you're a threat. And because you're threat, you're no longer human. You don't belong. I have to protect myself and my people and that means you have got to go. And I think it is so increasingly hard in our high stakes political environment to short circuit that psychological default. And I think when you talk about low probability, but high consequence events, it gets even harder. And I don't have an easy answer.

[00:13:39] It is the work of my entire life to say I am inextricably tied up with the victims of my school shooting as I am with the shooter in my school shooting. And they are all human beings. And when we don't fight that every second of every day, it's just not a fun fight, but it is. It's just so easy to let in that siren song of, yeah, but they're the worst. And it doesn't play out in ways. We think we're saying that the legislators are the worst and they're evil and they are less than human because they don't care about kids. But that virus doesn't always spread in ways we can predict. When we let it in, when we let in that, but they're stupid, but they are the worst, all the evidence points to that they're actually evil, we don't get to contain it. It spreads. That spreads. And I feel like it has spread. I feel like we thought we were naming the actual evil people, but what we were doing was introducing, opening the door. Letting down our guard, however you want to put it, that siren song of, yeah, but they deserve what they get. And you can't control it once it's there. It spreads like wildfire. And the kindling is so seductive in so many situations.

Beth [00:15:17] I don't have any answers either. And when I talk about how I'm talking about something, I'm mindful that also a lot of people are listening to what I'm saying and I have no idea who they are or what they're going to do with it. That's one reason that I am just becoming more and more concerned about putting more of our kids' relationships online. Anytime you talk about phones at schools or social media, if you're coming down hard on it, one reaction is that we shouldn't cut kids off from information, which is not what I'm talking about. I think information is good, but I think teaching kids that primarily their relationships are online is bad and harmful. And another reaction, a fair one, is that a lot of kids who don't find community in person find it online. And I hear that. I also really worry about it. I worry about the ways in which online culture can reinforce a sense that you don't belong in your real life community. I guess where I land is I just want to beg everybody to just attack this problem through a sense of belonging. If you are a legislator thinking about some bill that tells people they don't belongs here, don't do it because it's not safe.

[00:16:52] Just prioritize this and say, right now what I'm worried about is safety and that means I need more kids to feel like they belong at school. I need young adults to leave their schools feeling like they belonged there. I need people to look at their community and think, "I belong here." Because people who think they don't belong are dangerous. Okay, so just prioritize that over whatever else you think. And if you are an activist for the rights of a group, prioritize telling that group you belong, you belong, you belong. All day. And it doesn't matter if some stupid law that's being introduced makes you feel like you don't. That's wrong. You do. And just how can we all of us say, we are going to care right now about more kids and adults, all of us just feeling like you belong in your community. And that is to me like the really important work of pushing back against the worst of this administration. Because the worst of this Administration to me are all the efforts to deliberately say, we are sorting right now. We are sorting people. And I don't want to sort people in resistance to that sorting either. Just how do we, in every way, put our arms around each other and say we got lots of differences and lots of things to figure out, but we all belong here as we do it.

Sarah [00:18:04] Of course, the hard reality is that this event will support the narrative that we are in a crime emergency. Which takes us to the situation in DC. So on August 11th, the president announced a federal takeover of the DC police, citing a crime emergency. I was struck, Beth, by someone pointed out his language in this moment at this press conference was so similar to the language he used way back in the day when he was taking out ads against the Central Park Five. Like it's roving bands, wild-- it was just like the language was the same. So this is clearly a long time pursuit. And it's like when you touch on stuff with him like the tariffs, something he's thought was a solution for the long time, and now he has the power to do what he's always thought we should do, this is what you get.

Beth [00:19:05] I think that's what's always been potent about him. I think when people say that he's authentic, this is what they mean, that he has held a certain set of beliefs, counterfactuals and evolution and progress be damned. He believes what he believes. He thinks these are the right problems. These are the solutions and he keeps speaking into them. And he is not alone in a lot of those beliefs that he is calcified around whatever the evidence of today says.

Sarah [00:19:34] So he ordered the deployment of 800 DC National Guard troops who he has direct control over as opposed to other states national guards. Although Republican governors from Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee are sending some of their state's national guard troops to DC, they initially named the head of the DA Terry Cole as an emergency police commissioner that has since been struck down in court, but he assigned additional orders escalating the crackdown, including ending no cash bail. Reportedly, his attorneys are looking into overturning the 1973 Home Rule Act, which would require any additional acts outside of 30 days to be approved by Congress. So he's talking about taking over more cities.

[00:20:18] So this is something that he, again, has been thinking about for a long time. I think it's important not to get caught up, though, in just his view of this and his notions because I do want to push back against the idea that this is just him play acting. He just wants to play act, to just distract from Jeffrey Epstein and this is all for show. All the DC National Guard troops are just picking up trash at the mall. I do think there are some of our listeners reported incidences of seeing National Guard troops just in very safe areas. But that's not the only places that they are. They are in high crime neighborhoods. CBS News did a pretty comprehensive analysis of the crime data, which shows that violent crime is down and that they're in a lot of areas that have lots of violent crimes, lots of car jackings, lots of property crimes. So they're not just at the mall. They are some of these other places.

Beth [00:21:26] I was thinking about in connection with the awful school shooting about how much Minneapolis has been through, something that really came through in the messages people sent us about this is how much DC has been through. It reminded me of a metaphor that Axios put out a few days ago, that Trump wants to turn DC into his personal Epcot. Everything looks the way he wants it to look, that he has, you know, kind of his private guard, securing it. It feels the way he wants it to feel. And that's happening in a place that one of our listeners described so beautifully as both Washington and the district. That there's official Washington, and then there are all the people who just live there and who have normal lives and are trying to get their groceries and get their kids to school and come home and have something great happening at the end of the day. Meet friends for dinner, just normal life.

[00:22:24] We heard so much about normal life from all the who live in this area who wrote to us. And these people who are just trying to live in the district have seen either someone in their family or someone that they know lose a job recently because of all of the cuts. They get the brunt of everything. There is no buffer for them the way there is for me living in Kentucky with a lot of this federal action. There's a little bit of buffer. They have none of that. So they're raw anyway. And to be raw anyway, and then have this presence of armed guardsmen, people who are equipped for military action, not to hang out in a neighborhood and make sure everyone is safe, I can see how that would just take that rawness and bring it to a place of desperation really. I remember once when you and I were walking around the Capitol in Texas?

Sarah [00:23:23] Yeah, that's what I was just thinking about.

Beth [00:23:24] And how the police officers there were equipped with the largest guns I have ever seen in my life. I know that the cliche is everything is bigger in Texas, but I did not realize that that meant also the guns that they carry around the Capitol. And instead of making me feel safe, it did make me feel very unsafe. It made me feel like, what are the threats here if this is the nature of weaponry that people need to carry around? I guess, this is a through line in my thinking. I just think people who feel unsafe are. And the culture of intimidation that that brings in is hard. And it's also different from an increased police presence which does help often prevent crime. Crime is often a problem of neglect. And so two things are true at once. That an increased presence in neglected places probably will lower crime, especially violent crime. And this is raising pressure and stakes in a way that I think is counterproductive.

Sarah [00:24:28] I just think this is such an extreme manifestation of everything right now. I totally thought of the Texas example. You know the other place I've seen this? Europe. A place that's supposed to be and usually is much safer than America. I remember the first time I went to Europe and I think we were at a train station or something like that, and the police officers walk around with fully loaded machine guns. And you're like, well, this is weird. I'm just really trying to tease apart my lived experience and my knee-jerk reactions from the reality. I lived in DC for almost five years. It is a place very close to my heart. It was a place that often felt very unsafe. And so I was like, okay, how much of this is just people who live in the place expect and accept a certain level of safety or lack thereof. I remember when we moved back to Paducah, we pulled up to an ATM and this person approached us. And because of living in DC, Nicholas and I both were like, oh my God, we panicked, we freaked out. And the guy just left his car to the ATM. But it was just we were so trained from being in DC to be on your guard, to be hyper aware. And I thought, well, maybe it's just this perception that crime is still such an issue is that so few people are around cities.

[00:25:51] But I looked this up and I found this-- it really caught me off guard. Like truly, I was like, holy crap, I did not expect that. It's like 86% of Americans live in or near a major city. So most of us have experience in cities. We understand what it means. Because there's this undercurrent of like that's because people don't come here, people don't know, people don't accept. But 86% is a lot of Americans who live in or near a city of like 500,000 plus. I think was the barrier. So people do know and they don't like it. And I don't or if there is a way for us all to come to like a level of acceptance of how much crime is okay in a major American city. I don't know when it's like, well, that's good enough. We're not going to fix it. Or if America really just wants to feel safe all the time, no matter where they are. But this is the same America that lets everybody own a gun. Just everybody and their mama can own as many guns as they want.

[00:26:59] And maybe that's the undercurrent of why we can't come to a decision on what are we actually talking about here? Like, what is actually going to work? Muriel Bowser has decided we're going to go with some of this. Look, and if I was the mayor of DC, living in DC, in my experience with DC, and somebody said, I'm going to spend $2 billion to fix up your parks and streets and fountains, I'd be like, yeah, baby, let's do it. I'd be all about that. I'm sure she's thrilled. But also you see people talking about nobody's going anywhere because they're too scared to go anywhere. Because there's also this entire immigration angle to this and you have ICE agents and checkpoints everywhere. That's unnerving.

Beth [00:27:40] Totally unnerving.

Sarah [00:27:41] Listen, and some of that is just like-- I went back to D.C. for spring break. I hated all the speed checkpoints in Virginia. I was like let me be an American. If I want to speed, I'll pay the consequences. But good Lord, they were everywhere. And I was, like, get me back to the red state of Kentucky. I can't stand this. So I would not do well under checkpoints all the time. Because that's the thing. I want to be free because I'm not doing anything wrong or nothing I decide is wrong. But everybody else who's stepping over the line come down on them like a hammer. Like, there's just so much going on wrapped up in all of this.

Beth [00:28:21] I am extremely worried about the ICE enforcement efforts. I'm extremely worried about the dramatic steps to hire more and more agents with fewer and fewer prerequisites, qualifications, concerns at all about the power that these individuals will yield and about this now the most well-funded law enforcement agency in America running around in plain clothes and often masked. And I am extremely concerned that that is going to provide people who do wish to do harm and opportunity. I am so worried about impersonation of ICE agents to be used again at cross purposes, what the administration says it cares about, trafficking of people. I just see so many ways in which they are creating a system that will invite more lawlessness because of the disrespect for the law that is being shown in their law enforcement efforts. Like, it's just this hall of mirrors. It's so frustrating.

Sarah [00:29:27] And again you want to build up the federal government while making war on federal employees. I'm confused about how that's going to play out. You want to be efficient, but you're taking two ICE agents, two FBI agents, a national guard and a local DC police to arrest people for throwing a sandwich. What are we doing? This is not government efficiency if there are six law enforcement agencies accompanying the DC police. That is not a government efficiency. The bright spot is grand juries are like enough. Like they try to get this one guy for throwing a sandwich and this other woman for-- I don't even know what she did, barely anything, and they were like federal crime attacking a police officer. And the grand juries were like, no. They took it to a grand jury twice for that one lady, and the grand jurors were like absolutely not, we are not charging this person. And that's rare that a grand jury does not charge because the level of evidence is so low. But this like we'll charge you with a felony if you dare step in our way, I'm encouraged that grand juries are like, no, you're not going to weaponize charges against people like this on this level. But they're going to keep trying. And what happens when finally this counter peg blows and you have federal law enforcement firing weapons on American citizens who are protesting in the streets of their cities? What are we going to do then?

Beth [00:30:46] That's what I'm worried about. What's the end game here? Let's say that I bought everything that the president is selling about crime in cities. Let's just say that I accept it 100%, no questions, no notes, agreed, I'm worried about crime too, do something, hooray. Are we going to permanently station national guard troops in these cities? That's a Band-Aid. That doesn't get to any kind of underlying issues. It's not a long-term fix, it's a Band-Aid. You're going to deploy them just indefinitely. Are you just going to keep buying bigger and bigger guns for them to carry around? Are you going to try to find something worse than the death penalty to threaten? You're going to charge petty theft at the federal level for everything forever, to the point where it's going to be hard to actually get indictments returned against people who are guilty because citizens are just saying this system's corrupt, we're done, we are out. What is the vision here?

[00:31:41] A lot of this crime data looks pretty good; it's trending in the right direction. And again, I understand if you're the victim of a crime, you don't care if you are one of fewer victims, it's still horrible for you. I totally get that you live your own story, not the data. But the data is looking good because we are using data to say what is a smart way to approach this problem? Okay, we put two police cruisers here between these hours when we get the most 911 calls, we add lights here. The fact that there is no particularized problem that they're trying to address and that the solution is throw everything at it as aggressively as possible, I don't understand where we're trying to go.

Sarah [00:32:29] Well, let's take a break and talk about that next. I don't know what to do with the fact that crime statistics are moving in the right direction. And I think a lot of it is because of that data-driven law enforcement effort. And 81% of Americans see crime as a major problem in large cities and largely support what he's doing. Not immigration, not the economy, but his approval rating goes up when you talk about his approach in these cities. Now it goes down. People don't love the National Guard. They don't want this expansion of federal government troops. And I think inevitably this expansion of ICE is going to be something people don't like. But they do want safe borders and they do want less crime. I don't want to argue people out of their desires to a certain extent because this is a democracy. I thought it was so, so good on Ezra Klein's show where he said is this just the most democratically supported march to end democracy that we've ever seen? Like, are we all agreeing that this isn't what we want to do anymore? I can't quite figure it out.

Beth [00:33:59] I felt a little bit of kinship with the messages that we were receiving from people who live in D.C. because I live in Northern Kentucky and I'm in Cincinnati all the time. And there is this viral video from Cincinnati. This has been everywhere of this brawl on the street. Of course, we did what everybody does. Cincinnati rose up to say, it's not like that here. And the million influencers make videos about how safe they feel in Cincinnati. And it's true, I feel safe in Cincinnati, generally speaking. The more I see of that video, the more I think I understand why that video has been so potent. And I think part of it is because it includes a young woman in a white dress. And she's beautiful and she has this long flowy hair and someone pulls her hair and she like falls backward because they're pulling her hair so hard. And when I have watched this video on a loop, the local news will do this. Sometimes they'll be talking about how the police union has done this vote of no confidence in the mayor because of how the mayor hasn't done enough about this brawl, whatever. And they'll play the video just over and over as the B-roll while they're talking through it. And she is what stands out in the video because it's like something that you don't expect to see in a fight. It's not a bunch of guys beating each other up.

[00:35:25] It looks specifically lawless, I think, because of this woman in this dress and her hair getting pulled and her falling backward as her hair is pulled. And something in you goes, we cannot live like this. This is not how it should be. We cannot live like this. And so I'm trying to notice my own psychology when those things happen to have more sympathy for people believing that there is a problem. Because, like I said, when there is problem, it is real. My sister loves Chicago. She has also experienced having people take stuff from their home, like there's been a burglary in her home. That's just a hard thing to hold. And you don't want that for anybody. And I think especially those of us who don't live in cities just think, "I'm just so glad I can fall asleep with my garage door up and not worry about it." It's just complicated. That feeling of safety is really complicated. And so we want someone to fix it. And I think that's fair. And we want it to be fixed in ways that don't punish everybody who's not doing harm. I think that's why there is so much contained in people's feelings about shampoo being locked up. Because it feels like because it's gotten so out of control, you have to make things less convenient for everybody. And I think that does just get to who we are and how we think about things in our sense of fairness and justice. So we'll take a little less law for a little more order.

Sarah [00:36:59] I'm really trying to unpack the vibe because I used to be a person who really would-- I don't know how to say this in any weirder of a way. I just have a lot of sympathy for Kim Reynolds. It's like an empathy I always have for the incarcerated, for the accused. And so I can really get myself in a place where everybody does something for a reason. But then I have to argue with a 16-year-old who's like if we gave everybody a house, there wouldn't be crime. And I'm like, baby, that ain't true. That ain’t true, you now? That's not true.

Beth [00:37:39] I wish that were true.

Sarah [00:37:40] I wish it were true, but it's not. And if everybody had endless therapy and everybody had a home, there would still be crime. People would still do mean things to each other. I believe that to be true. I also believe we're never going to get to a place where everybody has therapy and is never exposed to lead and never gets abused and always has a house and never sees drugs. That ain't going to happen either. So I'm trying to like hold who I used to be and the reality of my lived existence. And I do think there's a lot of what I can only describe as vibes going on right now that shows up in that polling that I think is relevant. I think the social media component that these viral crimes go big and they stay around. And listen, I can tell you about all of them because my dad sees them on Fox News and comes home and tells me about them. He was really wrapped up in the football player. I think there were twins and the football player got into it with this other kid and he got shot and killed on the player. He was 17 years old. And that was everywhere. And so they like live in your head because we are negativity biased, because the anecdote, the stronger, more tragic story sticks. Not to mention we're all obsessed with true crime.

[00:38:55] I don't turn on my little frame TV with the menu of shows and there's not a documentary, 2020, FBI files. Do we sit here and list them all for 30 minutes? Because I probably could. I talked about this at our live show that there's also been the like celebrity-cation, I don't know. I'm trying to make up a word, but we've turned true crime people into celebrities. They're over there still talking about Casey Anthony on TMZ. Like, they just stay. They stay and they stay and stay. And also, more crimes go unsolved. It's a huge number of violent crimes that go unsolved. And so that sticks in people's mind. Well, we don't even know who killed that person. We'll never going to know. People out there still upset about JonBenet. I would also like to know who killed JonBenet. You know what I'm saying? So I think that those just swim in and they just live in your brain, rent-free forever. And I think a lot of this sense of like chaos and disorder I feel like they're not counted in the same way because they don't take place in a city in a place in the geography. But the scam and the frauding is just massive all the time. And we've all just sort of absorbed it. And I don't think we have a place to put it. We can't put it on our local police department that we're all getting defrauded, that everybody's losing their life savings, that since we've been recording have gotten four spam calls. I don't think we have any place to put that too and I think that shows up in the people's concerns about crime.

Beth [00:40:39] And this just really pisses me off about the administration. That they're putting the guys with guns in the streets, taking National Guard’s members away from their families for this while they are dismantling the cyber-crime agencies, like the expertise in our federal government. I know everybody wants to be mad at experts right now, but the people who actually could help with the scams and who could figure out where are these coming from. Connected to the school shooting, so many colleges right now and so many police departments are wasting time and scaring everyone to death because of hoax shootings. They're getting these calls from some company that is selling these swatting events. And they hear bullets in the background and they lock everything down and it takes forever to make sure that actually nothing's happening here. The federal government has to get involved at that level. That is not something that state and local police can manage. And so while they are spending oodles and gobs of money on ICE, that is happening every day and getting persistently worse and infecting everyone's lives in a real way. And the guys with guns can't do anything about that.

Sarah [00:41:56] Well, and I don't know how that plays out. I know it does not work for Democrats to use statistics and experts to argue people out of their emotions. I don't know how far Trump and his administration can use emotions to argue people out their lived experience.

Beth [00:42:18] Yeah, and imagery. Visuals.

Sarah [00:42:20] Well, and everyone I know has a story now about an immigrant they know who was doing absolutely nothing except for contributing to their community that's been detained. So that's spreading. So how long before would people say, no, no, that's not what I meant. You know what I mean? But that's such an emotional, like, I don't know how-- my instinct tells me the emotions go further than the data. To try to argue people out of-- and it's not even your argument with them. You're deceiving them, you're distracting them. You're distracting them with the emotion of like I'll go after X, Y, Z bad guy. I don't know how long that road can go before people say, "I'm still getting scammed all the damn time. I'm still seeing all these crimes going unpunished or unsolved or whatever.".

Beth [00:43:22] Deodorant is still locked up at Rite Aid.

Sarah [00:43:24] Deodorants is still locked up at Rite Aid. Because I do think he's running out of room on the economy and immigration. That's what we're seeing in his polling, right? Where people are going, "You're all talk, dude. Like you're not achieving anything." Nothing's getting better. Everything's getting more expensive. And I don't think he's even deceived the stock market. I just think they're living high off the AI bubble. So I think it could happen. I think it can happen that people go, it's not better. I still feel this chaos. You have national guards in every city in the United States and my grandma just still got scammed out of her life savings. And I still just saw a viral beat down in another place in America. So what are we doing here?

Beth [00:44:14] I do have another wondering that I want to run past you in terms of the popularity of what he's doing right now. I wonder if there is a little bit or maybe a lot of people just thinking, "It's about time that we celebrate our law enforcement again."

Sarah [00:44:35] Absolutely.

Beth [00:44:37] I'm glad that he believes in the police, that he beliefs in people out there doing law enforcement because I'm so sick of law enforcement having to apologize for existing. That is not a view I'm expressing myself, but that is a sentiment that is pervasive. Even where I live. Especially where I lived. I live in a community that is still very like we love a touch of truck. We love the firemen. We love the police. We love our civic, kind of anybody who's in the community, helper bucket. And I think that even as I live in a place that would say, yes, of course, Black Lives Matter. We don't want anyone shot by a police officer. There were solidarity marches around George Floyd and we really respect and revere the police and want the police to be respected and revered broadly. I just think that maybe even the biggest part of this is yay, come back out of the shadows and feel like we're proud of you and we need you as we're continuing to work our way out of the pandemic and the reckoning that we had in 2020.

Sarah [00:45:48] Yeah. Look, I think that in democratic circles it is not acceptable to say anything positive about the police. I know because I've had this fight with my 16 year old. And I think it's tied up with the fact that you can't say anything positive about men in general. Men are broken. Men are violent. The police are just an expression of that. And I don't agree with that and I don't believe that. And I think a lot of people who say all cops are bastards and the police are the problem and even people who supported defunding the police would call the police in a hot fucking minute if somebody showed up on their doorstep. That's what you see. That's what's you show up in these communities that you think would hate Donald Trump, but they're like, no, I want some police in my community.

[00:46:41] Communities of color, communities of poverty, communities with real struggles are saying, "I never said I did not want the police around. You put those words in my mouth." I am not saying policing is not hard, complicated work. I am not saying that there has not been oppression, tragedy, violence coming from the police towards the community. But the idea that we're just going to reject all of this, that we're going to reject any place, I think there's a through line. Because here's the thing, if I say we're done with the police because of what they've put out in the world, we're done with churches because of the abuses within the churches, we're done America because it's this colonizing, racist superpower, then people just go, how long till you're done with me? Where does this road lead?

Beth [00:47:42] You were done with me in the process of making your list. I'm somewhere in that list.

Sarah [00:47:48] Yes. I'm somewhere in that list. And I absolutely think don't forget the military; put the military on that list too. And so I just think that we have got to find a way to critique without discarding. We have got find a to articulate leadership that improves without making things irredeemable. And I think the police is part of that. And you can see the way people twist themselves in knots when it's a female police officer or a police officer of color. Then, oh no, what do we do then? I talked about this on our spicy More to Say. The mayor of Chicago twisted himself in knots just not wanting to answer plainly-- mad credit to Muriel Bowser, who's like, no, more police on the streets helps. Again, what's the end game? We can't keep the National Guard picking up trash in perpetuity, but more policing does decrease crime. It just does. But he wouldn't answer that, the mayor of Chicago. Joe and Mika were like, "Would more policing help reduce the crime?" "No, more affordable housing would reduce crime." Dude, don't. Don't do that.

Beth [00:49:18] And what sucks is that both things are true, but that's not what people want to hear. Both things are true and it's not what we want to here.

Sarah [00:49:24] The homelessness component of it, the mental health component of both homelessness and violent crime is where people really tie themselves in knots, where it is a real test of everyone's humanity. It's really, really hard. I've thought a lot about homelessness because I think that what people are reacting to is not because I absolutely think that contributes to this sense of chaos and this sense of disorder. And I just think a lot of what people are reacting to is the moral injury of having to see someone suffer on the streets. It's not that people are rejecting the humanity of the homeless. It's that you're putting them in a position, I feel it myself, of saying, I recognize their humanity and I feel powerless to help them. I feel powerless to help them and you're just making me look that in the face day after day after day.

[00:50:45] I think so much of crime is an exercise in powerlessness. Like what am I going to do I think are the complicated conversations we have around police, around people we're asking to face their own powerlessness. To take on the risk that terrifies the rest of us is complicated too. These are deep psychological issues. Really, really, deep hard emotions around fear, around control, around empathy. And I don't think an easy solution is at play here, but I do think that we need some solutions because I'm even tired of hearing leaders in big cities tell me it's complicated. I'm tired of it. I don't want to hear that anymore. Don't tell me it's complicated again. That's your job. Your job is to address the hard, complicated issues. So start trying.

Beth [00:51:47] And here's the really frustrating thing. They are doing it. They are it even though it's complicated. It is your job as a leader to know that a problem is complicated and to deal with all that complexity and then come out to the public and say, here's what we're doing. That is the adjustment. Don't come out the public and say how hard it is. Know how hard is in your office and come out of the public and say these are the things that we're going right now. We are prioritizing putting cruisers in areas where we see a spike in 911 calls. We are hardening the schools. Whatever. Just come out and tell your thing because you don't need to be paralyzed by the complexity and you don't need to tell the public that nothing can be done. That is false. That is false that nothing can be done. It is false that nothing is being done. And it leaves this room for somebody who has cheap answers and brute force. Actually, I shouldn't say cheap answers. This is the most expensive approach we could possibly be taking to any of these situations. But there is an opening, a runway because the public cannot handle let me explain how complex it is. There is runway for him to come in and say, it's not complicated at all. We are going to scare the bad people off of doing bad things.

Sarah [00:53:07] Well, okay, I think we fixed it. Here's what I need from primarily democratic leadership in these big cities. I don't want you to lie to people. I'm not asking you to say it's simple, we'll fix it. I understand, everybody gets it. Every adult on planet earth knows that issues are often bigger and more complicated than they first appear, right? I think you just need to lead with the short term fixes before you move into the systemic solutions. And I think it became acceptable, preferable, like the path in democratic politics. And, listen, some of this might be coming off Obama and his always cerebral answers, which I love. I'm not mad about it. But I think there is some taste for here's what we realize is the longer term thing we need to be working on. These are the systemic issues we need to be working on. But for today we're just going to put out more cruisers.

[00:54:22] We're not asking you to just let it simmer with us for the next decade until we sort it out. Right now, this is what we're doing. Right now, we're going to do some of this stuff that we know won't address the systemic stuff, but it will address the acute things that everybody's talking about right now. Donald Trump is king of the acute. And I'm not saying that's always the answer, but you need a little acute. You got to keep people's attention. You got to say I heard you. I heard, you. We talked about on the spicy the Cracker Barrel. The Cracker Barrel is I heard you. We're going to do something right now because I heard you and we'll keep working on it long-term, but we're going to something right now as well.

Beth [00:55:09] I agree with that. I think when you think about different approaches, Mayor Bowser in DC is in a totally different situation than other mayors because of the power that the federal government does have over DC. So while I understand we heard a lot of frustration from listeners with her, I totally understand their frustration and I totally understand her believing the best thing I can do is not make enemies and figure out a way through this. I think it's rough. It's rough. On the more national, how does this play level, I think you're right about those mayors touting what they are doing that works. I think they should talk about the wastefulness of this approach, how expensive it is. We have been seeing progress with smarter, not harder. And so this is what we're trying to work on. I think the care that they need to exercise because I think we're in a lot of these national branding pickles right now because Democrats do not want to demonize people, especially people who are in desperate situations or people who have historically been marginalized or whatever it is.

[00:56:27] Because Democrats don't want to demonize people, the nation has heard Democrats as demonizing law enforcement. Like they picked a side and they picked the criminals. And that is really unfair, but it does not matter. That is where we are. And so you got to find a way in responding to this to not demonize law enforcement. And that is extremely hard because of what's happening with ICE. Extremely hard. So I think the approach of we welcome more police in our community, don't take people away from their families from other states to come here. Just give us the budget. We have police officers who'd be happy to work more. We would love to recruit more officers. We would to expand their training and get more people on the street all the time. Just us give the money to do that. We can handle it here in our city if you will get out of our way and give us back some of the funding you just cut. Whatever it is, I think if you can talk about the National Guard with respect in this process, that's really important to helping people see that Donald Trump has given a caricatured view of who Democrats are, not who they really are.

Sarah [00:57:48] I keep thinking of the Tolstoy quote, "All happy families are alike. Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." It's a little bit like crime, right? We all know what we want, but the crimes that disrupt it are all so unique. Each criminal act, there are statistics, there are patterns that matter because we're fundamentally talking about human behavior. The terminal uniqueness you can get locked into, especially per city. Every city is different. Chicago is not New York. New York is not LA. Y'all been there? They're different. And also the homelessness issue and the people underneath the overpasses feels pretty similar.

Beth [00:58:37] Well, can I just interrupt you real quick to say too that another frequent left-wing response to this is to look at places like Amarillo, Texas. Like places where there is a lot of crime, but that don't get mentioned in the list of big cities because they are red places. But that's the point. Crime arises in a lot of different situations in unique ways. I'm sorry to interrupt you. I just wanted to make sure we talked about that.

Sarah [00:59:07] Well, yeah, that's always the-- highest crime rate is actually Birmingham, Alabama, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. I say that just because I keep thinking about this article I reported on in the Good News Brief about how juvenile delinquency. Something that if you'd asked me when we were all talking about it, especially as a victim of a school shooter, a teenage, very complicated criminal, I would have thought like are we really going to ever get anywhere with this? Like the ways that teenagers become violent and the abuse or the divorce or the drug addiction or the mental health issues, like each person is their own universe. Their own galaxy of inputs. How would we ever get to it. But we did. It dropped off a cliff. And some of it is so interesting because it wasn't these big massive policy turns. It was during the crack academic when there was so much coverage, these communities weren't like, forget it, we'll just try our own thing. We're just going to do it ourselves. We're just going to try. We're going to try to do something. And some things they did worked. Their community organization are still in place today and they worked and they mattered and it happened. And despite the systemic problems that can feel so complicated and in this way that you can't overcome, you can.

[01:00:38] The crime rates are dropping. And so if we're back to this, okay, so we're using the data and we're doing the things, but so much of this is vibes around crime, around the chaos we feel in our online lives in particular. Then they're going to have to be online solutions. They're going to have to community solutions in the face of massive corporate power, in the face of incredible difficulties in our decentralized media environment. I think it mattered that we all became aware that the local news was always reporting on young black men and putting their faces up and training us to see them as dangerous. I think that mattered. I think ultimately had impact. So what happens if we say, it has impact you guys if we're listening to true crime stories all the time. It matters if we are sharing the viral beat down. It matters if we say, "This is giving us a perception of reality that isn't true." It matters if we start writing into our representatives and saying, the crime I care about is the fact that I can't answer my damn cell phone because I'm afraid I'm going to get swept up by AI that sounds like my kid telling me they need money to get out of jail. Like that matters.

[01:02:01] And pushing back against this perception. I really try to do this when New York City comes up, especially where I live. There's a lot of talk about New York city and Chicago and how dangerous they are. And I say, I was just there. I was fine. I was safe. It was a great place to be. I'm just trying to think about if this is a vibe issue, if this a perception problem, then I have to start thinking about my community a little bigger and more differently than just the police car that rolled down my street. If the vibe around crime is bigger, then we have to think about our community as bigger and how we interact there and how push back against these perceptions and how say like what's the equivalent of law enforcement with online scams? What is that going to look like? Do we need new and better solutions to that?

Beth [01:02:53] Yeah, and I would just say I want to echo that constitutionally and pragmatically; crime is localized. I saw that the president is talking to Mike Johnson about some kind of big crime package making its way through Congress. That's a terrible idea. That's not what anybody needs. Crime is localized. The coverage of it needs to be localized with care for the community, not just sensationalism. Care for the community and the legal rubric and the solutions deployed need to be localized as well.

Sarah [01:03:31] This is all very tough stuff, which is why we have something beautiful and easy up next in Outside Politics. Beth, I don't know if you heard this, but Taylor Swift got engaged.

Beth [01:03:52] I did hear that. I heard it here first when I was sitting in this chair on Zoom with you.

Sarah [01:03:59] True. Then we talked about it for about five minutes and then I just didn't do anything about it again. I didn't pay attention at all. I didn't share approximately 200 memes.

Beth [01:04:09] You went hard at this.

Sarah [01:04:11] Piece of online content on Instagram. Saved in a highlight on my Instagram profile if you should be interested. I have it for you. I could not let it go. And I chose it. I was, like, this is not a hijacking of my attention. This is what I'm going to do today. Today I am going to celebrate the engagement of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. That's what I'm doing. That's why I did on August 26th.

Beth [01:04:35] Why do you feel that you chose that? Like to give the whole day to it.

Sarah [01:04:40] Because I wanted to. Because it was pure and beautiful and great. And I was right. And I said from the second they started dating that these two were going to get married. And so I just wanted to lean in and it was funny. It made me laugh. So many pieces were funny and delightful. And everybody was in it with me. So I was like, you know what, this is when I chose my online community. Because it is a real community. And I chose to spend the day with them celebrating this engagement. Not in my real life.

Beth [01:05:12] I think it was very exciting. I'm not all the way through this episode yet, but I've been enjoying hearing Nathan Hubbard and Nora Perinciotti talk about this on every single album. Because I especially enjoy thinking through what will this mean for her music? And they've done a really nice job talking about like what will this mean for her music and for her positioning in general. Like what factors did these two have to think about in announcing this? I'll tell you the effect that this has had on me. It has made them both much, much more real to me. I went to the Eras tour. I had really good seats and was pretty close to her actually. This makes her seem more real to me even than that because you just think about what it means to get engaged and what that must feel like. And I think especially as we've gotten more details and learned that like they sat on this for two weeks before announcing it to the world, that just makes them feel so real. What were those two weeks like for them? And how much did they get to enjoy before they had to think through? And every time somebody posts something like imagine the NDA that the florist had to sign. Imagine what the conversations with the jeweler were like. It's just made me think about like what must it be like to walk through the world as these two people?

Sarah [01:06:33] Well, I think what's so delightful about them is, yes, they are different. Yes, they are different than us. Yes, their legal situation is more different. Their business situation is more different and more complicated. But there's just glimmers where I think, no, I share this with her. This is just what it's like. When his dad was like she was getting antsy and he didn't know when he was going to do it. I was like that sounds familiar. That sounds really familiar. I think that it's easy to get stuck in like they are operating on a different plane than us all the time. I just don't think that's true. I think when she's in the hospital and her dad's had a quadruple bypass, that's just a pretty shared human existence. And so I think it's just fun to see that kind of shared moment and root for them. And everyone was like she just shared the pictures like a regular girly.

[01:07:37] I just liked all of that. Also look, deep in the core of who we are, people like weddings and babies. And this can take dark turns. Like if you've ever watched that Duggar documentary and how like they always up their audience level when one of the girls got pregnant or when Michelle got pregnant again, like definitely with these like YouTube watch-alongs. But I think that that is only exploitable because there is just something real fundamental going on there. Just real cellular about mating. I don't know what else to call it. I mean, that's why animals do it, right? Like, there's just something deep, deep, deep around mating that people-- that fires up, I don't know, all the parts of our brains. Maybe they're like higher functioning parts in the front and also the caveman parts in the back, maybe that's what it is.

Beth [01:08:34] So I've read some of the actually I'm sad about these pieces this week.

Sarah [01:08:39] No!

Beth [01:08:42] What I just keep thinking about is a lot of the worries that people have about weddings in particular. I think this is just a chance to rewrite a lot of those scripts on a mass scale in the way that people have been rewriting them in their lives for a couple of decades now anyway. Taylor Swift does not lack experience or imagination. She's not getting married to the quarterback of her hometown's football team when they're 19 because she hasn't thought about any other way her life could be. It's not like that. She's extremely successful, sophisticated CEO of one of the only mainstream brands left that has a high approval rating, right? She knows what she's doing. He knows what's she doing. They're older. I'm so happy for them that this happened in their 30s instead of their 20s at this level of fame. Because to be able to be normal, happy people, plus the lawyers and the NDAs and the publicists, I'm just so glad for them that it's at this stage of life. But just all the hand wringing I see about like what does this mean for the way that Taylor has pushed back on the pressures that women face? And why is she leaving her lavender haze kind of lament? I just think it's a really cool thing now that so many people are going to have a cultural example of what marriage can be, not bound up in the things that have made you think that marriage is always and only toxic.

Sarah [01:10:21] Yeah, I'm really over the marriage is toxic. As someone who has been with her husband since she was 19 years old, just like Beyonce-- just want to throw that one out there that I think everybody conveniently forgets about. You want to talk about somebody that's been with somebody since she was a child. Beyonce has been with Jay-Z since she was 19 just like me. Same exact time actually. But I don't ever see that narrative come up around her. I want us to stop this. I would like us to. I don't know how to say it any more kindly. When I was in college, my flip phrase about feminism, I would say, I don't care if you want to vacuum in pearls and heels, just don't tell me I have to. But it is increasingly obvious to me that some people don't believe that. They think the pursuit of feminism is to eliminate that option for people. And anyone who chooses marriage or children or sort of a traditional path is making an anti-feminist and anti-woman choice. I do not agree with that and I'm really tired of that narrative.

[01:11:27] And I think it has done some real harm and again created this path for other people to come into the chat and say like, see, I told you all along, they hated it. They hated that life you wanted and they hate you. When this woman who has reached such levels of fame and incredible articulation of the struggle of being a woman. And she's anti-feminist because she's having this love story that she'd been writing about her whole life as she so helpfully pointed out. Like, come on guys. Somebody sent me a screenshot of this woman being like, has Taylor spoken about Gaza? She's spoken about fascism? Then I'm not celebrating her engagement. And I wanted to throw my phone across the room. Like, stop it. Please, I am begging you. Stop. With the core of who I am. Cut it out, man. Just cut it out. Everything can't be about everything. Whether you're a woman, whether you're a black person, whether you are a Democrat. Please stop.

Beth [01:12:45] What makes me so excited about this is that a lot of times in my marriage I have thought, we just don't really have an example of a marriage that looks like this. We're doing something different here. We're taking pieces of what we saw in our parents' marriages, but we are in a really different place career-wise, financially, the way we're raising our kids, the way we relate to each other, we are different. And a lot of people in our generation, I think, feel that way. We're trying to do something different. And how great for my kids to have on the world stage an example of what that can look like. Just that here are these two people with a ton of mutual respect and you know she's going to do it her own way and she's going to write lots of songs about it and it's going to write a new script. And I think that's awesome and exciting.

Sarah [01:13:42] You know what it is, I think, this ties a lot of this, we've been talking for a while here, we recorded a spicy, we recorded this episode, and I think what it is it’s when we do that, when we it's broken, can't you see the history of marriage is the history of patriarchy? Can't you see the history of the United States is a history of colonization? Can't you see the history of policing is the story of oppression? You freeze it in time. You that's what this institution is and that's what it will always be. And that is cynical and negative and everything people don't want. They want, especially Americans, a future. They want solutions. They want to feel like we're going somewhere. And if you don't offer them that, then the siren song of, I'll at least put it back the way it was, is awful loud. And I just don't want to do that anymore. I don't think marriage is one thing. I don't think the church is one thing. I don’t think the Democratic Party is one thing.

[01:14:52] I don't think human beings and all the things they create are ever just one thing. And so I'm just really resistant and arguably a little cranky about people saying, no, it has to be this one thing or else. That's what it is, right? It has to this one thing or else. Listen, if you’re not happy for Taylor Swift or you don't give a shit about her engagement, I don't care. Great. But don't bring that not only is it I don't care, but the fact that you care makes you stupid. In other words, you will pull this American royal wedding out of my cold dead hands. That's what I'm trying to say here, Beth. I want it televised.

Beth [01:15:45] I'm not trying to. I'm not taking anything from you.

Sarah [01:15:47] I want it televised. I want you to be there. I want to watch. And if it's not televised, I want 3,000 pictures and videos and details. I want it all. Okay, I got that off my chest. Congratulations to the happy couple though, for real.

Beth [01:16:02] Yeah, I'm really happy for them.

Sarah [01:16:04] Congratulations to these two people who I definitely knew were going to get married from the second I saw them out in public together.

Beth [01:16:09] I'm happy for their families too. They all seem so happy and I think that's wonderful.

Sarah [01:16:14] Great. All right, thank you so much for listening today. This is your final chance. That 15% off Substack subscription deal expires on August 31st. So you only have till Sunday to hit that link in the show notes. We will be back in your ears next Wednesday because of the Labor Day holiday. Until then, have the best holiday weekend available to you.